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Wednesday, November 29, 2017
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Happy Wednesday, everyone! Here's what you need to know to get ahead of the day's health news.
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Trump's pick for health secretary heads to Capitol Hill
Alex Azar — the former drug company
exec nominated to take over HHS — is scheduled to appear before the Senate health committee today for a round of questioning. (This isn't Azar’s official confirmation hearing, which hasn’t been scheduled yet.) STAT’s Erin
Mershon and Ike Swetlitz talked to Senate Democratic aides about what issues will likely
come up at the hearing. Here’s a rundown:
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High drug prices:
Azar oversaw Eli Lilly’s U.S. business at a time when the pharmaceutical giant was raising prices, and his 10-year tenure at the company will likely draw scrutiny from
both sides. There’s rare bipartisan agreement that rising prescription drug prices are a problem.
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The opioid crisis:
Last month, the acting secretary of HHS declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, which allows the agency to take new actions, from appointing new bureaucrats
to changing prescribing rules for providers. It will be up to the new secretary to come up with that plan.
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The ACA:
The new health secretary will have to sign off on future regulations and make decisions about the law, including whether and how to promote open enrollment. Azar has voiced
his opposition to the law, calling the Obamacare markets “fundamentally broken” on Fox Business Network earlier this year.
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This vitamin is skewing medical test results
The FDA is warning that a common vitamin can interfere with certain medical tests. Biotin is a B complex vitamin that’s often found in multivitamins, supplements for hair, skin, and nail growth, and prenatal
vitamins. Those products can contain biotin levels up to 650 times higher than the recommended daily intake. There’s been an increase in the number of reports that biotin has skewed test results, including a test for troponin, a biomarker that’s used in the
diagnosis of heart attacks. The FDA says it received a report that one patient taking high levels of biotin died after a troponin test falsely turned up low results. The agency released new
recommendations for doctors, lab personnel, and consumers in light of the reports, and says it’ll continue to monitor the problem closely.
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Engineers create a beating bandage for damaged hearts
(nenad bursac / duke university)
Biomedical engineers have
created an artificial patch of human heart tissue that’s designed to cover damage caused by a heart attack. A heart attack can kill off cardiac muscle cells, which don’t regenerate and are often replaced by scar tissue
that can lead to heart failure. So scientists used human pluripotent stem cells — which can be turned into heart muscle cells in the lab — to grow a patch big enough to stretch over damaged tissue, complete with electrical and structural properties that mimic
those of a beating human heart. The Duke engineers have previously shown that smaller versions maintain their function when implanted onto rodent hearts, but the patch isn’t close to being functional in a human heart just yet. The next step: Create a patch
that’s thick enough to actually carry out the work that cardiac muscle cells did before they died.
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Tens of thousands of deaths blamed on fake drugs
A new
report finds 11 percent of medicines in developing countries are counterfeit — and those bad drugs are to blame for tens of thousands of children’s deaths each year. Researchers analyzed data from 100 studies on thousands
of drugs and found that drugs to treat malaria and bacterial infections accounted for the bulk of counterfeit drugs. That includes drugs that haven’t been approved, don’t meet quality standards, or intentionally misrepresent an ingredient. The WHO report estimates
that up to 169,000 children might be dying from pneumonia each year and another 116,000 children from malaria after being given counterfeit medications. The agency has run a global database to keep tabs on fake drugs and vaccines since 2013, but officials
say many cases of counterfeit medicine likely still go unreported.
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Inside STAT: San Diego bets on medical tourism
San Diego seems poised to become a destination for concierge health. The city recently launched a big marketing push to attract patients seeking medical treatment. The pitch: Get your hip replaced or your
cancer treated by leading specialists, then take your family to SeaWorld or the beach. Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and Mayo Clinic in Minnesota are making a similar bid. But experts say there's a lot more than marketing involved in creating a true destination
for health care. STAT's Meghana Keshavan has the story — read
here.
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Supplement labels aren't always accurate
A popular type of performance-enhancing supplement often contains unapproved drugs and substances that aren’t listed on the label, according to new research published in
JAMA. Researchers bought 44 products online labeled as selective androgen receptor modulators — dubbed SARMs — and ran them through rigorous chemical testing. Only 23 of those actually contained SARMs, and four of the
products didn’t contain any active compounds at all. Others contained an active compound, but the amount in the supplement didn’t match the amount listed on the label. The study’s authors say their findings point to a need for greater oversight of performance-enhancing
supplements.
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What to read around the web today
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A hospital charged $1,877 to pierce this 5-year-old's ears.
ProPublica
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There's drama on dietitian Twitter, and it's exposing deep rifts in doctrine.
Washington Post
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Finally putting some fun in erectile dysfunction.
New York Times
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More reads from STAT
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Scarlet fever,
a disease of yore, is making a comeback in parts of the world.
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Scientist concedes his
controversial MS therapy, once a source of great hope, is ‘largely ineffective.'
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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,
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